Last year marked the fifth anniversary of the DC Bombshells, the fun exercise in retro variant covers that exploded into statues and an ongoing series about DC's fighting women of World War II. In those five years, we've seen a number of DC heroes captured in comic form, like Flash (on 2014's The Flash #32 variant), but many have yet to actually get their own statues. More than three years in the making, Bombshell Jesse Quick finally gets her collectible due, and becomes another stand out work in a line filled with hits.

As cars became more commonplace in America, so did driving to where you planned to eat. Once restaurateurs in the 1920s and 1930s noticed fewer and fewer people getting out of their cars to eat, carhops began to show up around the country. In the decades before the drive-thru became commonplace --- and before modern dining establishments used them as part of a retro aesthetic --- carhops were all the rage, delivering food to your car on foot or on skates.

 

Photography by Luke Brown, Townsquare Media
Photography by Luke Brown, Townsquare Media
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Like many jobs at the time, carhops were initially almost always men. Then the second World War came, and like those employers at the steel mill or the factory, restaurants looked to women to fill the roles vacated by men headed overseas. Whether its anecdotal knowledge or not, this is also when restaurant owners supposedly first noticed pretty girls sold more food than men. In spite of the fact that carhops have been both men and women over the years, it's the female waitresses that have been ingrained in pop culture history, which brings us to Jesse Quick.

While some of the Bombshell statues over the past few years have featured characters in specific professions of the era, more of them have been about stylistic revamps of those particular heroes or villains. Flash falls into the former category, with Ant Lucia bringing the core of the Flash costume to era-appropriate carhop fashion. The bright red really pops, and the yellow collar and waist apron really help set the whole piece off. More than a few of the Bombshells have had a similar monochromatic palette, but it continues to work wonders in physical form. It also brings an authenticity to the piece, making it feel more of that time than a modern paint app.

 

Photography by Luke Brown, Townsquare Media
Photography by Luke Brown, Townsquare Media
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Jesse Quick has such a deceptively simple design, as those are often the most difficult to bring to life without flaws. There's just so much to like about Bombshell Flash's look, from her carefully coiffed scarf hair --- often a necessary style for the working women of the time --- to the lightning bolt pinstripe along her capris pants, all of the small details add up to one excellent work of art. Tim Miller's and Karen Palinko's work on translating Lucia's art to the physical form can't be undersold, and they really do capture the attitude of the original concept just wonderfully.

Even though she does come with skates, we all know the Flash doesn't need wheels to move fast. To sell that even further, the statue features a little tuft of wind on her left foot, showing that she's hustling to get the strawberry shake to whoever ordered it. Despite not needed the skates, they get just as much detail as the rest of the figure, getting a nice red bolt of lightning and wheels to contrast the golden hue of the leather. The great thing about this statue, and the Bombshells line in general, is it makes me eager to learn more about this character and her place in the alternate past of the DC Bombshells. That's just as true for a carhop like Jesse as it was for a baseball player like Kate Kane or a European socialite spy like Selina Kyle.

With the clever style that remade the women of DC Comics in ways we'd never quite seen, but were immediately enamored with, it's no wonder the Bombshells brand took off. Jesse Quick presents a unique take on the legacy of the character and the era in which Bombshells exist. The only real disappointing thing about this statue is that it took this long to get a Flash Bombshell to serve up shakes for the rest of your collection.

 

 

The DC Bombshells: The Flash Jesse Quick statue will be out on March 29 for $125.00. This statue was provided by DC Collectibles for review.

 

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